172 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. 



Bad as the Arab may be, negroes are amongst the worst 

 enemies of game birds, both at home and all over the 

 territory of the stars and stripes. In Maryland, for instance, 

 they work havoc amongst the quail by means of falling log 

 traps on the familiar figure-of-four principle, and in Texas 

 a wail of wrath and anger goes up from the local gunners, 

 who declare the negroes take entire flocks at a time, and 

 they never set any of the captured birds free for stock. In 

 this they show their characteristic improvidence, or want 

 of regard for the future. The birds for the most part are 

 taken alive to the neighbouring towns and villages, where 

 they sell them at what they consider a big price. Their 

 most destructive instrument is a mere pen built of sticks, 

 and covered with brush. They have four trenches leading 

 into the pen from opposite directions, coming to the surface 

 about its centre. These trenches inside the pen are partly 

 covered with bark and sticks, except at the centre, where 

 they all come together. Corn or peas are scattered thickly 

 in the pen and also in the trenches. When a flock of quail 

 comes along, they find the food in the trenches, eagerly 

 follow it up, and, with rare exceptions, every one of them 

 goes into the pen, and is there a prisoner. He never thinks 

 of looking down for the hole he came in at ; he looks upward 

 all the time and sees no way of escape. The freedman comes 

 along and transfers the poor birds from the pen to his cage 

 from one prison to another. Thus whole regions are 

 swept of their quail in the Southern States. 



Darwin, in his delightful "Naturalist's Voyage Hound 

 the World in the Beagle" mentions a really sportsmanlike 

 plan of action which, could it be imported, would add a 

 pleasant variety to the list of English out-of-door sports. 

 He describes how the South American Gauchos used to 

 catch the tinamous with a small lasso, or running noose, 

 made of the stem of an ostrich feather fastened to the end 

 of a long stick. A boy on a quiet old horse, Darwin says, 

 frequently would catch thirty or forty birds in a day. 



